


behind my eyelids are islands of violence

by mishcollin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fallen Castiel, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 02:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mishcollin/pseuds/mishcollin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been two weeks since moving in with the Winchesters, three since he fell from heaven, and Castiel can’t sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	behind my eyelids are islands of violence

It’s been two weeks since moving in with the Winchesters, three since he fell from heaven, and Castiel can’t sleep.

Dean first noticed three days after Cas first showed up—he’d popped up at the bunker door with his trenchcoat worn to rags, his scruff an uneven patchwork of dirt and grime, and a question on his lips.

“Dean? I know it’s too much to ask, but—”

 _I have to ask it of you,_ Dean had thought as he ushered Cas in without another word. Castiel had beelined for the couch and dropped into a solid 14-hour power-nap despite Sam’s worried, questioning glances. After he had awoken, he wouldn’t meet Dean in the eye and he’d been twitchy, anxious, picking at scabs or nails or scratching at his new beard. Dean respected the fact that the guy was probably frazzled to the bone and left it alone. If he noticed Castiel had stayed up past when he’d gone off to sleep—which was around 2:30 am—he didn’t say anything.

Fast-forward: three days later, Dean lay in bed at 3 am listening, heart in his throat, to the soft footfalls outside his door, only the faintest brushes of socked feet against the hardwood floors. Dean went for Ruby’s knife under his pillow without hesitation and rolled so that he stood on his feet, creeping toward the door of his room with bated breath. He heard nothing, so he poked his head out the door only to see—a lot more of nothing.

Dean slid into the hallway, back against the wall, heading in the direction of the kitchen. Logically, Dean knew it had to be Cas—it wasn’t like anyone could exactly rob the bunker, given it was more or less a cement hole in the ground—but his dad (and life, he guessed) had taught him that wariness never went unrewarded in any scenario.

As it turned out, Dean was right; Cas sat perched at the kitchen table, the coffee-maker gurgling and Cas’ head ducked in the shelter of his crossed arms.

“Cas?” Dean asked, setting the knife on the counter, and Cas jerked his head up, his dark hair sticking out in chaotic tufts and his eyes watery with either exhaustion or tears, Dean couldn’t tell.

“Dean,” Cas practically croaked, then he cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “It’s 3 in the morning, what are you doing up?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Dean said lightly, knowing his tone of voice wouldn’t mask his concern for a second.

Cas stared at the table for a few moments longer as if trying to find a code in the wood’s faded pattern, the only sound between them the soft sputter of the coffee-maker, before Cas whispered, “I can’t sleep.”

“Why not?” Dean asked.

Cas shook his head and refused to answer.

“Nightmares?” he guessed, and he took the thinning of Cas’ lips into a white line and his slumping shoulders as an affirmation. “Shit, I’m sorry, Cas. I definitely know how you feel.”

“Every time I try to sleep,” Cas whispered, “images, they haunt me behind my eyes. It’s like I can’t escape no matter what I do. I still see falling lights behind my eyes, every time I close them.” Cas bowed his head at this confession and absently tugged his hand through his hair, granting explication to its state of disarray.

“To sleep, perchance to dream,” Dean quoted, and Cas squinted up at him.

“Didn’t take you as a Shakespeare fan,” Cas murmured.

“I’m not. Dude’s a stuffy dick.”

Cas smiled, albeit weakly.

“But he has a few good moments here and there.” Dean narrowed his eyes and drummed his knuckles on the table, aware of Cas’ eyes fastened on him. “I liked _Hamlet_ well enough.”

A comfortable silence descended upon them. The coffee-maker whirred.

“You realize coffee isn’t going to help your sleeping issues, right?” Dean asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, I’m aware. I figured if I can’t sleep, I may as well have something that’ll ease in the way of consciousness.”

“Come on, man. At least try to get some shut-eye?”

“I’ve tried, Dean,” Cas answered, a little more testily than before. When his eyes met Dean’s, they weren’t their usual, nearly ethereal shade—more like a reedy blue, as if the color had been washed out with Cas’ exhaustion. “It’s not going to happen. So let me be.”

“Fine, then,” Dean said, sitting up straighter. “I’ll stay up with you, then. You don’t have to do this alone, Cas.”

Cas tilted his head and peered at Dean for a few moments, unbroken, before his lips softened into a small, tender smile. “Thank you, Dean. I…appreciate that. I appreciate everything. Letting me stay, looking after me—”

“Yeah, yeah, Cas. Save it. Say something to keep me awake.”

Of course, Dean ended up crashing on the table not fifteen minutes later, but Cas didn’t seem to mind.

—-

A week passed, and Cas was starting to look more fried each and every day. His eyes were bloodshot, and his skin was so pale that Dean could see the soft throb of the vein in his temple. He still hadn’t shaved, and although Dean had practically shoved him into the shower a few times, Cas seemed to take no real relief in being clean like most people did. Then again, when was Castiel ever going to be one to settle into regular human convention?

Cas had taken to chugging a soda an hour, curled up on the couch and his red-rimmed eyes fixed on nothing. Something about seeing his previously invincible friend so broken resounded hollowly with Dean every time he looked his way, and after a few more days, he found himself wishing Cas would leave just so he wouldn’t have to witness his deterioration.

 _Cas is your friend,_ Dean thought as he brushed his teeth the Tuesday after he’d found Cas at the kitchen-table, _your best friend. It’s just a case of insomnia. He’ll push through._

Cas stayed out on the sofa that night despite Dean’s disapproving looks and eventual plea for Cas to at least lay down and try to catch a few hours. Cas had politely refused, and Dean had thrown his hands up and stomped off, refusing to acknowledge his concern as he thumped into bed and passed out.

The next morning, he found that Cas had busted out the 3-hour energy shots, but he ground his teeth and said nothing.

Sam and Dean discussed it over the course of the next week in hushed voices in the hallways where they thought Cas wouldn’t hear. 

“Dean, we need to take him for a doctor. Not sleeping regularly for two weeks isn’t just unhealthy, it’s life threatening. Cas could literally die from overexhaustion. You realize that, right?”

“Fuck that, Sam! We’re not carting him into some goddamn institution. There’s always the chance they’ll find something…other with him, y’know? The guy wasn’t even human two weeks ago! They could lock him up or something, who knows?”

“Dean,” Sam said in a flat, “reasonable” voice. “He’s killing himself. He’s running himself into the ground and he won’t be able to bounce back if we don’t help him.”

“He’s gotta conk out eventually, Sam. Just wait on pulling the hospital card, alright?” Dean ran a hand over his face, taking a deep breath. “Cas can make his own choices, and he’ll pull through. He always does.”

“No offense, Dean,” Sam said, carefully, “but what happened the last time you put faith in Cas like that?”

“Fuck you, Sam.”

“Listen, Dean, I’m not saying you shouldn’t trust him, or have faith in him, or whatever your guys’ praying-powwow is. I’m just saying that Cas can’t always make the best decisions for Cas, and sometimes neither can you.”

Sam had a point, and they both knew it.

“Just give it a few more days, alright?” Dean said with a defeated sigh. “Two more days. Then we’ll take him to see someone.”

Sam pursed his lips unhappily but didn’t pursue the matter, knowing that Dean wouldn’t budge on it anyway.

Dean went off to check on Cas, who was still curled up in a burrito-ball on the couch. He watched Dean a bit balefully, his red eyes and his dark scruff giving him the appearance of an angry hobo.

“Dude,” Dean chuckled, “I think you need another shower.”

“Leave me alone, Dean. Please.”

“Cas,” Dean said, more sharply than he intended, any trace of humor gone. “You’re killing yourself. Okay? And you know it.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” Cas said quietly, and Dean could’ve fucking punched him.

“Are you fucking _kidding_ me, Cas?” Dean snapped, then lowered his voice so he wouldn’t prompt Sam’s intervention. “This is really how you wanna go, huh? Not with a bang but with a whimper and all that shit?”

Cas shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Jesus, Cas, I swear to God, I’m gonna inject you with something.”

“That’s unethical,” Cas said mildly.

“You know what’s not ethical?” Dean said in nearly a growl, feeling his temper boiling. “Showing up at your best friend’s house looking for guidance and shoving it right back in his face. Coming to me for help and then when I try to, flipping me the bird.”

“That’s not unethical,” Cas said in a small voice, watching Dean now more carefully now, “that’s just rude.”

Dean glowered at him, slowly balling his fists.

Cas sighed, burrowing deeper into the blankets. Dean could still see the twitching of his limbs from beneath the covers; his body slowly giving out, shutting down. Dean swallowed, hard.

“What do you expect me to do, Dean? If I try to sleep, the nightmares will just wake me up anyway.”

“You know what you could be doing, Cas?” Dean asked, pissed all over again. “You could be saving your strength so you can get out and kick Metatron’s ass. Save your siblings, if that’s your preoccupation. Instead you’re mooching around here, practically _letting_ your life slide away from you. Goddammit, Cas, it’s like you don’t even _care_ anymore.”

Cas sucked in a shaky breath. “I don’t really want the life I have, Dean.”

Dean was struck dumb for a moment into silence, before he whispered, “You selfish sonofabitch,” and turned to leave.

“Dean—” Cas began.

“No, Cas, you don’t get to talk. I’m done listening to you. If you want to throw your life away, fine. If you don’t even want to consider what that would do to me, then go right ahead. I shouldn’t be surprised. You don’t think of anyone but your damn self.” He couldn’t turn to look at Cas as he said this; just stared straight ahead at the wall, digging his nails into his fists to keep from punching something.

“What would it do to you?” Cas asked, and Dean realized with a strange twist in his stomach that the curiosity and surprise in his voice were completely and heartbreakingly genuine. “I’ve been nothing but a burden since I got here, been nothing but a source of conflict since I entered your life. I would think you’d be relieved, with me gone.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dean practically shouted, whirling to face Cas, only to be interrupted by Sam sticking his head in the room and asking, cautiously, “Is everything alright?”

“Just fuckin’ peachy,” Dean grumbled, still shaking his head in disbelief as he shoved past Sam and out of the room.

—

Dean spent the rest of the day avoiding Cas, alternating time between the library and his room. Sam rapped his knuckles on the door around seven and informed Dean that he’d made burgers, but Dean had strangely enough lost his appetite and stayed stubbornly in his room, organizing his CDs and leafing through some old war-records he’d picked up from the library.

He finally ventured out around eleven, only to find Sam alone in the main room, poring over the map-table with his brow furrowed in concentration.

“Where’s Cas?” Dean asked, and Sam glanced up at him and raised his eyebrows in a significant kind of way.

“He’s trying to sleep,” Sam said pointedly, and Dean nodded, taking in a breath of relief.

“Any luck on that?”

“Dunno. I wouldn’t disturb him though.”

Dean ended up heading to bed around midnight.

It’s 2 a.m. now and Dean’s listening with sad resignation to the familiar sound of feet creaking softly on the floorboards outside his room. Dean debates intervening, still irritated from earlier, before he jolts up from bed and opens the door, startling Cas and almost running him into a nearby wall.

“Dean,” Cas whispers, and he looks like shit. His hair is matted and his face is pinched in misery, his eyes filmed with weariness. His hands are trembling.

“Does sleep really scare you that much?” Dean asks in quiet astonishment, something in him panging at the way Cas seems to cower like a dog waiting to get kicked.

Cas nods.

“You didn’t get any sleep? None?”

“Only about an hour,” Cas whispers. “I had nightmares so I woke up.”

“Jesus,” Dean murmurs in sympathy.

“It’s just; I…I can’t stay in that cold room knowing that I’m separated from my brethren, completely alone; I can still feel my grace sometimes, _ringing_ in my head, and I can hear the ghosts of my siblings talking to me and—” Cas cuts himself short with something short of a dry sob. “I think I’m going insane, Dean.”

Dean doesn’t know why he does it, but he moves forward and wraps his arms around Cas’ shuddering form, holding him as he breathes in deep, juddering gasps.

“Shh, Cas, it’s okay.” It feels, strangely and warmly, like comforting Sam when they were kids after nightmares. Sam would wake up crying and terrified, blubbering about monsters under his bed, in the closets, and Dean would hold him just like this.

Cas is still shaking but he slowly relaxes in Dean’s arms, unwinds, his muscles uncoiling, letting himself be consoled and sagging a bit against Dean.

“I can’t go back in there,” Cas mumbles into Dean’s shoulder, and Dean feels a slow tremor work up his spine. “I can’t. I’m sorry, I have to stay awake. I can’t have another dream of Metatron cutting out my grace, or anything else, I just _can’t_ —”

“Stay with me,” Dean says before he’s even thought out the words, and the syllables dangle there for a moment in silence; Cas clearly shocked by the offer, Dean shocked that he’d had the nerve. The two of them are suspended in a bend of quiet, almost tense.

Cas recovers himself first and slowly nods. “Okay. I know how you are about, um—I’ll stay to my side, and—”

“It’s fine,” Dean says with a clearing of his throat, releasing Cas and feeling heat flaring up in his face, bright and hot behind his eyes. “Just, yeah. It’ll be fine.”

Cas trails after Dean and sticks resolutely to the other side of the bed when he crawls under the covers. It’s been months, possibly years, since Dean has shared a bed with anyone (maybe even since Lisa), and the heat he can feel through the sheets is odd but not unpleasant. It’s a comfort, almost, the idea of another person with him for the night, even if that person is Cas. Especially if that person is Cas. Dean tries to pretend he didn’t think that, blaming it on exhaustion.

“Thank you, Dean,” Cas whispers a moment later, and Dean realizes Cas is facing him, possibly trying to seek him out in the dark. “And I’m sorry. For being such a…shitty friend, as you say. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of your hospitality or your advice.”

“It’s fine, Cas. Just try to sleep, okay?”

“I’m sorry,” Cas whispers again, for nothing in particular, and Dean listens to his breath slowly ebb into a deep and lilting rhythm. The cadence of it is soothing on a bone-deep level, and Dean finds his own body slowly unknotting from the awkward tension of sleeping with his very male best friend.

Dean stays up for a while thinking, trying to see Cas in the dark and failing. Somehow despite the spaces between them, Cas is a solid, warm presence, and Dean strangely enough feels like he should be closer to him. Protecting him.

Dean thinks of Cas, stupid, rebellious Cas fighting for humanity from the get-go, giving up all he had for a species that wasn’t even his. There’s something amazing about Cas, Dean realizes with a soft swell of fondness. Cas is everything Dean imagined angels to be when he was little, and this realization shocks him and leaves him tossing for another half an hour.

He passes out for a few hours and wakes up around 5 a.m. enveloped in warmth with the feeling of breath beating softly against his forehead like a quiet tide.

He frowns and shifts, disoriented by the pure heat surrounding him, and realizes with a sharp twist of mortification and horror that it’s because Cas is clinging to him like a goddamn octopus, his breath snuffling in his hair and their limbs tangled together under the sheets.

“Cas,” Dean whispers in panic, struggling to break free and failing as Cas tightens his grip, “Cas, you have to—”

“Dean,” Cas murmurs in a voice unlike Dean has ever heard from him before; soft, sleepy, almost a whimper of a sound. Dean thinks for a desperate moment that Cas has woken up, but when he turns, he finds Cas completely conked out, his eyelashes fluttering in tandem with his breath, soft as a rush of bird’s wings.

And _shit_ , Dean knows he can’t wake him up; not when he’s looking all contented like a fucking kitten and he’s getting the first few solid hours of sleep since he’s been human. Dean tells himself to suck it up and closes his eyes, clearly not enjoying the proximity or the warmth at all and clearly hating every minute of what he classifies as definite and unmistakeable cuddling. Clearly. Obviously. He definitely doesn’t shift a bit closer and tuck his chin over the top of Cas’ head because that would be, well, not like him. Which is obviously why he doesn’t do it.

As it turns out, Cas also hogs the covers, but strangely, Dean can’t find it in him to care.

—

“Why do I always have to be the goddamned housemaid?” Sam mutters to himself as he deposits a half-full glass of milk in the sink. He quietly mocks Dean’s voice to himself, “‘Cas and I are gonna get pizza, Sam. Clean the house, Sam. Stop the apocalypse, Sam.’ Un-fucking-believable…”

He stomps down the hall to Dean’s room, the closest to the kitchen, where he finds the door ajar and the bed unmade and the sheets twisted into knots.

“I’m not his cleaning lady,” Sam grumbles to himself, moving into the room to fix the bed. He leans over to yank the sheets back, and can’t contain a choked noise of surprise.

On the memory foam, there’s not one indent of space, but _two_. Which means two bodies. Because two spaces, that means two bodies, right? Unless Dean can clone himself.

Sam throws the covers back over the evidence and backs up from the bed, eyes wide.

Last he checked, Dean hadn’t brought a girl home last night. And the only other person in the house (that Sam knew of, at least) was Cas. Which would completely and totally explain the bright-eyed, well-rested Cas he’d seen this morning and Dean’s shifty eyes, his nervous tics and laughs and attempts to get away from Sam.

 _Son of a_ bitch, Sam thinks in amazement.

Sam can do two things, at this point; he can completely forget what he just saw, so as to not make Dean uncomfortable. That would be the considerable, supportive thing to do, the way to be a good brother about the whole situation and not make Dean feel more excruciatingly awkward about it than he probably already does.

Or he can make Dean a glittery rainbow cake with the word “CONGRATS” on it in sparkly icing.

Sam grins.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Twenty One Pilots' "Migraine." Please let me know if you catch mistakes. :')


End file.
